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On the chocolate-tobacco-wood-fruit black tea flavor continuum, this tea fell solidly in the middle, with perhaps a slight preference for the chocolate/tobacco side of things. While I love each of these flavors independently, some how, together, they all got muddled up. I’ll try brewing a little more lightly next time to see if I can un-muddy the whole situation.

After the first few sips, I put the rest of the pot over ice, which had a gentling effect – but still didn’t clarify what this tea was trying to be.

Occasionally, in the right mind-set, I can think of of different teas as substitutes for chocolate, butter, or vanilla ice cream. I reach for Mandala’s ‘black beauty’ when in the mood for chocolate, and now I can reach for this when I’m craving a delicious buttery mouth feel. The spinach aftertaste is just a bonus.

As opposed to some of my never-fail teas, teas that can be brewed with any level of sleepiness and always turn out beautifully, this tea is capricious and utterly unpredictable. Sometimes it can be everything I ever wanted in a green tea – vegetal and savory, with a wonderful chewy mouth feel – while other times it gives me nothing but off flavors.

Like with any moody thing, it always makes me wonder what I’ve done to deserve my treatment. On off-flavor days, I feel as though I must have offended it by some unknowable bug-squishing or flower-tramping episode. On perfect brewing days, I feel like I’m being rewarded for an unremembered kindness or unnoticed act of grace.

No easy-going tea could ever win my affections as much as this one has.

The first thing I notice is the unique appearance of the dry leaves – they’re huge and multicolored. I see white, green, and various shades of brown. Beautiful!

Fortunately, the flavor is just as lovely as the appearance. This tea tastes like warm, honey-filled, baked grapes. Whatever mellows and sweetens this tea masks the sometimes sharp Darjeeling back note.

Beautiful! A lovely combination of a strong, bitter front, and lively, complex, chocolate finish. Magically, this tea is enough to cut through all of the static in my brain on this tiring end-of-the-workweek day.

I cut back on the leaf this time, and the tea magically lost its darkness and instead came out with a beautiful, slightly burnt caramel flavor. Absolutely unique!

This tea starts with the appearance of the irregular, obviously handmade cannon balls of tea. I couldn’t resist rolling each pellet around between my fingers before plopping it in the tea pot – it made me feel strangely connected to the people who crafted the tea.

The brewed tea is pleasantly astringent – but still somehow mellow and kind. I was attracted by the ‘cinnamon’ flavor in the description, but I don’t taste any hint of spice here. Mostly just an astringent start, with a vegetal, grassy aftertaste.

Tried this tea again and brewed it a little shorter than before. Instead of the sour streak I remember from last time, I found a shockingly smooth, dark tea with subtle fruity notes.

Out of the ten teas I sampled from Teavivre, I think that this and the Lapsang Souchong are the ones that I’ll have to repurchase and keep around the house.

This Darjeeling tastes vaguely fruity without being specifically grape-y. I’m also getting a lot of wood flavor and a dryness after the sip. A strong sour flavor as I drain the cup makes me wonder if my Darjeeling ‘bolted’ (Bolted, defined by “The Tea Enthusiast’s Handbook”: a phenomenon… wherein the brisk flavor components suddenly overwhelm the body characteristics and the cup qualities become unpleasantly assertive).